OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau doubled down Wednesday on his support for a senior government official who suggested factions in the Indian government sabotaged the prime minister’s trip to India last week — despite a flat denial from India’s external affairs ministry which labelled the theory “baseless and unacceptable.”

Trudeau’s insistence that the official — revealed by the Conservatives to be the prime minister’s national security adviser, Daniel Jean — is a member of the professional, non-partisan public service whose advice should be respected and believed, prompted howls of outrage from opposition parties.

They accused Trudeau of provoking a diplomatic crisis with India in a desperate bid to deflect blame for his trouble-plagued eight-day tour of the country, which hit bottom with the revelation that a convicted attempted murderer and one-time Sikh separatist extremist had been invited to two events with the prime minister.

“There has never been a government, Liberal or Conservative, who has used a national security official to clean up an embarrassing mess that was self-inflicted by this prime minister,” Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer told the House of Commons.

Today in #QP, the PM told two different stories that cannot both possibly be true. It’s alarming that Justin Trudeau does not understand the seriousness of the accusations he is making against the Indian Government. He must clearly explain the facts behind his conspiracy theory. pic.twitter.com/fb19xu5vrf

NDP foreign affairs critic Helene Laverdiere said Trudeau has managed to make a “botched” trip even worse by supporting the sabotage theory.

“Is the prime minister trying to create an international diplomatic crisis?” she asked.

Jaspal Atwal — a B.C. Sikh convicted of trying to kill an Indian cabinet minister in 1986 — attended a reception in Mumbai, where he was photographed with Trudeau’s wife. An invitation to a later reception in New Delhi was rescinded as soon as news broke that Atwal was on the guest list.

In a background briefing arranged by the Prime Minister’s Office in the midst of the furor over the invitations, Jean suggested Atwal’s presence was arranged by factions within the Indian government who want to prevent Prime Minister Narendra Modi from getting too cosy with a foreign government they believe is not committed to a united India.

An official spokesman for the Indian ministry repudiated that theory Wednesday.

“Let me categorically state that the government of India, including the security agencies, had nothing to do with the presence of Jaspal Atwal at the event hosted by the Canadian high commissioner in Mumbai or the invitation issued to him for the Canadian high commissioner’s reception in New Delhi,” Raveesh Kumar said in a brief statement posted on the ministry website.

“Any suggestion to the contrary is baseless and unacceptable.”

But Trudeau did not back down on his support for Jean, whom he described as “a distinguished public servant who’s served governments, regardless of their political stripe, for over 35 years.” Indeed, he said the previous Conservative government “so valued Mr. Jean’s service” that it chose him to represent Canada in a speech to the United Nations.

Unlike the Conservatives, whom he accused of politicizing the public service at every opportunity, Trudeau asserted that his Liberal government respects and appreciates the work done by professional, non-partisan public servants, “particularly those in the national security and information areas.”

“When they make recommendations or when they make statements to Canadians or to this government, we on this side of the House choose to believe them,” he told the Commons. “On that (Conservative) side of the House, who knows?”

Scheer questioned how Trudeau can simultaneously blame rogue elements in the Indian government for Atwal’s presence on the trip as well as British Columbia Liberal MP Randeep Sarai, who has taken responsibility for inviting Atwal and apologized for his lack of judgment. Trudeau accepted late Tuesday Sarai’s resignation as chair of the Liberals’ B.C. caucus.

“Is the prime minister actually saying that (Sarai) has taken sole responsibility for a scheme concocted by the Indian government? ... How can they both be true?” Scheer asked.

Conservative MP Deepak Obhrai, a former parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs who travelled to India twice with former prime minister Stephen Harper, called the Liberals’ suggestion that someone in the Indian government was behind Atwal’s attendance “nonsense.”

“Who was responsible for taking the picture with his wife? Who was responsible for taking the picture with (Liberal Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet) Sohi? Who was responsible for sending out that invitation? Are you telling me that the government of India was? No,” Obhrai said.

Atwal, a one-time member of a Sikh separatist group that is banned in Canada and India as a terrorist organization, was convicted of attempting to kill Indian cabinet minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu on Vancouver Island in 1986.

He was also charged, but not convicted, in connection with a 1985 attack on Ujjal Dosanjh, a staunch opponent of the Sikh separatist movement, who later became B.C. premier and a federal Liberal cabinet minister.

The Conservatives chose Alberta MP Jim Eglinski to lead off their questions during Wednesday’s question period. Eglinski, a former RCMP officer, revealed he was one of the first police officers on the scene after Sidhu was shot.

“I helped him and his wife into the ambulance. It’s a day I’ll never forget,” Eglinski said.

“The victims of terrorism, they have names, they have faces and they have families. To the prime minister, why would he ever meet with Jaspal Atwal?”